Chapter Twelve
Legend
The corridor splits open around me, shadow peeling back from stone, and the first thing I see is her. She’s got blood on her throat like a necklace, jacket hacked off and riding the top of her ribs, eyes full of knives, and Creed beside her looking like the world’s most exhausted executioner.
The bond slams into me the second I’m through, vicious and greedy, a hot hook under the breastbone yanking me forward like I belong in her orbit and nowhere else. I hate it. I love it. And I’m already smiling.
“Who did this?” I ask, voice low enough to rattle the floors.
She doesn’t flinch, just tips her chin like she’s daring me to step closer. “Relax, Your Majesty. Warcraft just keeps getting more interesting.”
Creed’s gaze cuts to me, a warning so sharp it could gut a god. “You should not be here.”
“Go take attendance somewhere else,” I snap.
I step in and she doesn’t step back.
Good girl.
There’s a smear of red at the corner of her mouth that isn’t hers or mine, and something feral slides through my chest like a blade unsheathed.
I lift my thumb, slow, and drag it across her lower lip.
She watches me the whole time, eyes bright and unbothered, like I’m a knife trick at a street fair.
The growl crawls up my throat before I let it die in my teeth. “Say it.”
She blinks. “Say what?”
“That you’re mine.”
She smiles, sweet as poison. “Buy me dinner first.”
Creed exhales in that very special way that says he’s actively choosing not to murder either of us.
“Mastery of SpellChemy at dawn,” he says, like we’re not vibrating the mortar out of the walls.
“She bails or is even a moment late, I will personally see to what follows. I expect both of you to pretend to understand what consequences means.”
“Consequences?” she echoes, eyes never leaving mine. “I don’t know if you even understand the meaning of the word, big king.”
“Don’t call him king. I am your only king, little monster.
” I lean in so the edge of her breath is in my mouth and my ribs ache from being this close without breaking something.
The bond is a storm under my skin. Static clawing at bone, heat licking vertebrae.
That black lace thrum that says take, mark, bite, keep.
And I know she has to feel some of it. How could she not?
The gods didn’t wire me to burn alone. There’s a fire in me and it’s alive and thriving—stealing my energy and demanding I bind it to hers.
“You feel this,” I murmur, letting the words curl against the soft part of her ear. “Don’t lie to me, monster.”
She laughs, bright and terrible. “I feel…bored.”
It hits harder than a dragon’s tail to the fucking face.
The smile stays on my face because I made it to last through wars and funerals, but something ugly rakes along the inside of my ribs.
I test the bond. Just a pulse. Just a little snap of heat.
Nothing she can name. And there, the smallest falter in her breath.
The tiniest catch like a wire drawn too tight.
“There you are,” I breathe, triumphant and mean.
She smooths it into a grin like it never happened. “You’re hallucinating, King Gaslight.”
I want to bite her hard enough the pain blinds her.
“Enough,” Creed says, and the corridor obeys, the braziers guttering to a sterner flame. He plants himself in the middle without quite getting between us, older-brother arrogance wrapped in a funeral coat. “You’re forcing something you’re not ready for.”
“Don’t make me kill you, brother.”
“Legend, take a fucking beat before you create a shitstorm that can’t be undone. Trust me on this.”
“She is mine.”
“So you keep saying.”
My eyes slide to his, holding.
Big brother grits his teeth. “Fine. But do not start a war in my hall because you can’t manage your teeth.”
“My teeth are perfectly managed,” I say, and then I look back at her mouth and decide that statement is a fucking tragedy.
She’s close enough to kiss. Close enough to kill. Close enough that if I breathe deeper, we’ll share a heartbeat. It’s a miracle I’m even pretending to be civilized. “You smell like detergent,” I tell her, because it offends me on a cellular level. “Fix it.”
“Aw,” she says. “Does it mask your cologne? Smoldering ego? Notes of petrol and delusion?”
“Gasoline,” I correct softly. “And hunger.”
The bond drags a claw down my spine. I swear I feel her flinch though she attempts to mask it. She’s stone. She’s smoke. She’s the first thing I’ve wanted to worship and ruin in equal measure. The calm that used to live in my hands is a ghost.
“Run, then,” I murmur, stepping back half a breath because I’m either going to kiss her or break the wall with her spine. “I’ll give you a head start.”
“I don’t run,” she says.
I grin. “I know.”
Creed tips his chin at her. “Dorm. Now. And if you see a blade on your way, don’t pick it up.”
“Terrible advice,” she says, brushing past him like a storm in a stolen jacket.
I let her shoulder hit mine as she goes.
Let the bond yank. Let the heat rip. Let the hunger kick my ribs open from the inside.
I don’t follow, because I want her to feel the space I leave behind like a hand at her throat.
She doesn’t look back, of course, but rounds the arch and vanishes from sight.
I stand there, smile still cutting my face, and hate how empty the corridor gets without her.
Creed watches with an expression I can’t quite place, but when he speaks, it’s not full of anger like a moment ago.
It’s lower, laced with something that sounds a lot like concern.
“You keep pushing like that and she’ll tear the campus apart just to spite you.
That is drama we do not fucking need right now. ”
“I know,” I say softly, thinking of blood on black stone, of a smear at the corner of her mouth that wasn’t mine. “I’m just teaching her to enjoy it.”
He shakes his head as if at a loss. “Dawn. Don’t be late.”
He turns away, coat whispering secrets to the floor.
I’m left with the taste of someone else’s blood and the certainty that the next time I touch her, I won’t stop until the whole damn university wears my fingerprints.
She thinks she’s not affected.
She thinks she can starve the bond out.
Sweet little liar.
Keep pretending, baby.
I can wait an hour.
Maybe two.
The silence stretches thin as wire, and I realize I’m still standing here like some lovesick fool, breathing the air she left behind. Pathetic. I rake a hand through my hair and turn toward the east wing, where my room waits with its four walls and the kind of quiet that used to feel like peace.
Now it just feels like waiting.
My footsteps echo wrong in the empty corridor, and the bond writhes under my skin like a Lycan who hasn’t had a meal in weeks.
I know sleep won’t come easily tonight. It hasn’t since I brought her back. My mind is weighted, like a cloud of demonic smoke settled there, pressing against my conscience.
Suddenly too tired to call a portal, I reach the tapestry that hides one to my chambers. I press my palm against the woven threads, recognizing the royal blood that flows in my veins.
The portal opens, a mouth of darkness that tastes like home, but now there’s this pit of emptiness that follows.
I step through, let the magic fold around me like a familiar coat, and emerge into my bedroom where moonlight cuts silver bars across the floor. The portal seals behind me with a whisper that sounds almost like her laugh.
I strip off my jacket, let it fall where it wants, and sink onto the edge of my bed. The mattress dips under my weight, and I can still taste her defiance on my tongue, still feel the ghost of her shoulder against mine.
Dawn is hours away.
Too many hours.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling, where shadows dance like memories of what I almost had. What I will have. What she can’t run from forever.
The bond purrs in my chest, patient as a lion for once.
Let her sleep.
Let her dream.
Let her pretend she doesn’t feel this thing between us clawing at her ribs the way it claws at mine. That it doesn’t leave an absence in her she can’t name even when she’s near.